Video Madness

Ahhh.. the joys of video on the Mac. This was the prime reason I went with the Mac as video on my PC just plain sucked. Between the very slow processing times and the crashes, it was an utter and complete exercise in frustration. So I've been working with several new programs (new to me)..

Cinematize
A DVD clip extractor and uses virtually any video format.

Movie Montage

Movie viewer and organizer. I found this to be very useful for all my camera video clips.

And of course, the new Toast 7.0 for burning my CDRs and DVDs. 7.0 is an awsome product and it can read that new stinking format of the digital recorders like my Samsung. The speed of encoding a DVD is very good and it even talks to my OLD HP300 DVD burner.

Portfollio 7 has been a joy to work with. I'm still learning the ropes of the application but I'm getting there.

I keep waiting for new laptops from Apple. I hope they bring out some new Intel based laptops with decent screens. The iBooks have very dated screens compared to my dell laptops and I just can not see paying the premium price for that. Hopefully I can have one by the time I go to Rome next year :)

Google-Talk is live

I'm on Google's new IM based on Jabber right now :) Who needs to wait for official notice that it's up and who needs the stinking Windows software that Google is offering. I set up mine using my old new friend Adium which I've mentioned before. The settings for my configuration are:

-- For iChat, just enter the information above.
1. Add an account, select "Jabber" as the protocol.
2. Your screen name is everything before the '@gmail.com'.
3. Server is 'gmail.com'.
4. Click "show more options" and make sure "use TLS if available" is checked. Leave "Force old SSL" and "allow plaintext..." unchecked for now. Connection port should be 5222, connection server should be 'talk.google.com' without the quotes.
5. Ta-da! Just login and you should be good-to-go.

These settings come from Smash's World which was kind enough to post them. So, if you feel the need, send a note on Google to packetattack@gmail.com

Yahhhooooo.. whoops! Wrong mega-company ;)

All fall down

Yep.. I did it.. I knew I could, it was just a matter of time. I crashed my Mac :)

Here is the sample of the panic message:

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x00000000034EF000 PC=0x00000000000AC8A0
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x240C8500)
PC=0x000AC8A0; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x034EF000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x002FDD40; R1=0x0D572420; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)

I was working on trying to convert my Samsung DVD burned disk to something more portable and :::boom::: a grey screen and a message in several languages telling me to reboot NOW. Apparently the DVD drive does not like DVD-ROM or whatever the hell this format is. I really regret buying the Samsung POS recorder. The first problem was it only takes DVD-R disks (who the hell only uses these nowdays?) and then it only supports this POS VRO format. What a mistake! I have a couple of other DVD drives to try and read it on but I will probably try to take it back to BestBuy for store credit if nothing else.

Meanwhile I bought Toaster since I was not that impressed with NTI's burning software even if it was cheaper.

I found over 4 gig of "lost" pictures the other day. I knew I had a disk around here and I finally found it. Wheeeee... there were some keepers on the disk along with my original pictures for some of my prints. A good reason why to use a decent work flow package to keep track of 25 gig of pictures. I really need to delete a few :)

Play that funky iPod now

One of my grips about my iPod, and there are only a few, is that I can not natively copy my songs from the iPod to the PC or Mac. Hard drives are fickle devices and they die when they want and the iPod has one of these fickle devices built into it. So it is very hard to understand why any decent engineer would not put in the option to migrate songs FROM the iPod to the host in an easy to use manner. Well, enter Findley Designs and their software "iPod Access 3.5". Be still my beating heart :)
Here is a niffty piece of software that lets me backup all my music to my Mac from my Windows formatted iPod and then I can add, move or change to my heart's desire. I was able to dump my current 15 gig iPod which only has 5 gig on it in just a few minutes. And everything played.. the ripped music, the bought music, the audible books(after I activated the mac for them) Score one for the consumer.. They even have a version for Windows if you are interested in that or like myself, live in an alter world half the time.

My other pet project right now is to turn my Mac into a music file streamer so I can get to my music over the internet. The solution I'm working with right now is VideoLAN which is a open source project with a OSX native client/server. It can play or stream virtually any video or sound format and since the Mac is virtually immune to all the nasty script-kiddie shit out there for IIS, it only makes sense to use it as the webserver. Who knows, I may end up with a few more Macs around here yet :) Dont tell the wife..

Right now I have just downloaded VideoLAN and will be installing it shortly and see if I can get it to play my tunes.

My oh my!

Looky what we have here :)

OSX running under VMware. It works but sloowly. But it sure gets the blood racing for when Apple really releases it for real on the Intel. I am half tempted to become a "developer" just to play with it on the Intel. It's very exciting to see the OSX screen come up on my Dell laptop, even in VMware. It gives me hope that someday it will be there for real.

Life will find a way

This post is a bit different as you can see from the quote from Jurassic Park where Dr. Ian Malcolm is trying to explain his Chaos theory. What I am referring to is Apple's attempt to control OSX in the wild running on Intel boxes. It is a lost cause, a complete and utterly lost cause in the big picture. As I suspected, it did not take long for the code to end up in the Torrent pool and now, we have the VMware images floating around. Not I will tell you exactly where to get it from, I will say that I have personally seen it there and available. VMware opens up a whole new world for those who are curious but really do not want to put out for a new box. Get the image, load it up, play for a while and say,"wow.. this OSX shit is pretty damn cool". What a great way to drum up even more interest, not that OSX needs more drumming ;)


Just as a point of interest, if you really, really want to find the torrent, you need a client and I found something called "Tomato Torrent" which is a pretty clean OSX Bit Torrent client. And it's free :)


There has been alot of press about the pending OSX to Intel migration but I have not seen very much from Jobs or other Sr Apple types since the official rollout. I have seen Microsoft thrashing like mad to get Bovine.. errr... Vista (what dumb name) out more or less on time. It's not like Apple to stay this quiet.. but then perhaps they are reeling from the patent wars. What a mess that will be since a Microsoft researcher beat Apple to the Patent Office with the basic iPod menuing design. That is going to be fun to watch. But in Apple's favor, just having the idea doesnt mean squat and so Apple will play the card that they "Apple" actually did something real with the idea whereas Microsoft sat on their backsides about it. Regardless, the lawyers will rich off this one and we the consumer will pay yet again.

DNS me

I got the Mac client working with domain names over the VPN finally. No thanks to Cisco or their documentation. There is a check box on the VPN concentrator for using Split DNS names. Now, without that checked the Mac would not use DNS , BUT, the Windows boxes worked just fine.. go figure. But once I found the check box, checked it and now the Mac is very happy on the VPN. I can even RDP now to my various servers.

I also found this in a MS newsgroup about using Small Business Server with the Mac.. I've posted something like these before but it's worth mentioning again.

Carbon Copy Cloner has been fixed to work with Tiger!!! yay!!!

> I installed the File sharing for Macintosh computers on my SBS server and, although the user has the proper write permission on a specific shared drive, she cannot access the server via SMB. Her computer is a Mac Os 10.3.9.

>
> She gets an error message saying in substance that either the server does not exist or the login/password is not approved. She has access to files on a different file server which is a LaCie NAS with XP Embedded and a product called PC Maclan installed.

>
> How can Mac OS X access shares on SBS without a third-party software? Is it possible?


Hey Nicolas.


Take a look at the setup instructions I've put on my site:
http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Lessons



There are several sets of instructions for connecting via AFP (
http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Lessons/archives/2004/12/connecting_a_ma_1.shtml
) and SMB (
http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Lessons/archives/2004/12/connecting_a_ma.shtml
).


In your case, setting up Services for Macintosh on the SBS server will have no impact on SMB access. With Services for Macintosh, you would need to access the server using AFP



The specific problem you are seeing with the "server does not exist" error is that you need to disable SMB signing on the server if you wish to access files via SMB. Instructions for doing that:
http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Lessons/archives/2004/12/how_to_disable.shtml

Chatty Mac

While the supplied IM software is ok, I really wanted something more flexible. So I did some poking around and came up with Adium which is a multi protocol IM client that is very flexible. It reminds me of Trillian for Windows and has many features and "looks" that you can use.

The Cisco client that I am using for the VPN works ok but seems to have a problem in passing the DNS settings to the Mac client. I need to dig at this a bit more but it's distressing that something as simple as DNS doesnt work right. As someone that has supported Cisco for years and recommended Cisco for same years, it's unsettling to see in the last couple of years the over all quality fo Cisco TAC and software like the client falling down rapidily. I just had to explain to a TAC "Engineer" that I was using domain authentication on my VPN conncentrator and it was NOT the same as RADIUS and then I had to explain to him HOW NT authentication worked. I paid for this? When I call TAC, its because I have exhausted ALL of my knowledge and could not find the info anywhere else. The last thing I expect is to train the TAC engineer on my dime and time. And it's not just me, I'm hearing the same stories from other friends of mine.

Radom thoughts

I got my package from ComputerHQ which had the complete Extensis Photo Suite for 280 dollars vs. the normal 500. Wheee... I installed the pxl SmartScale which lets me enlarge my pictures without any lose (so sayth the Marketing hype). And I am very happy to report, that it works! I took a normal 8 megapixel print I took in Chicago and went from the 3264 pixel count at 72 dpi and went to 4426 pixels at 100dpi and printed both. You can not tell the difference at 8x10 and it's only went you go up to around 140% that you can see the difference. No jaggies, chuncky looks. The print loses a bit of contrast but that is easily touched up. I tool another picture from the web at 2000 pixels and scaled it up to 8000 pixels. Perfectly usable at this scale of increase. You can actually pick up some detail but not alot. You can not make detail where there is not any to start with.

There was an interesting article on iLife for the Mac at 80 bucks vs. trying to patch together the same functionality for a Windows box at a few hundred dollars and in the end, still not having all o fthe fucntionality of iLife or the intergration. But, I still miss Picasa from Google for the quick and dirty clean up and editing. iPhoto just does not measure up to it. And Photoshop while I love it, it is using the sledge hammer when I just need a pair of nail clippers. The author seems to think that the Windows tools are better but then I get the distinct feeling that he has a personal bias.. really? a writer with a personal bias? tell me it's not so ;) Aside from his trying to convince himself that his PC is the better box, the article makes good reading. And as someone who has both boxes and has done fine art photography and written books on both the PC and Mac, I can state that he's full of s**t about the Windows tools being over all superior. A couple of the tools are, not the lot of them and certainly not the OS. I traded a superior tool in the form of Picasa for something close on the Mac because I got very tired of the crashes, the spyware, the bloatware and so on. Having the OS crash in the middle of an complex Photoshop editing run is just short of justifiable homicide. And Windows is consistent if nothing else with crashes.

I'm going back to my Extensis projects :)

Shame on Cisco

Now that the dust has mostly settled from the Blackhats vs. Cisco in Vegas it might be good to take a look at the whole situation. The very short version is that someone (Mike Lynn) was going to give a presentation about a hole in Cisco's IOS. The presentation had been vetted months earlier by his employer (which should win Scum of the Year award) and Cisco. Hours before the show, Cisco got cold feet, threaten ISS which then turned on their own employee, poor Mike. "DO NOT GIVE THIS PRESENTATION" announced the gods from on high. Mike, on the other hand, bit the hand that fed him (note the past tense) and quit so as a free agent he could give the presentation. At this point, all hell broke loose. Cisco should get the award of being the biggest asshole company this year, pushing Microsoft aside for a change. If Mike had stolen the code, given away the full exploit etc, I could see all that happened but he didnt, he played by the rules and got dumped on.

A very good blog on this with details comes from his lawyer at The Shout where she details her adventures with Cisco, ISS and the Feds. It makes for very interesting reading and I highly recommend it to anyone involved in security work. You really, really want someone like her on your side.

Now, how does this relate to my Mac adventures? Not directly but Apple's history of using the big stick to get their way is legendary and they are a hair away from being in the same boat as Cisco and ISS. You dont need the big stick alot of the times and you certainly dont need to bully people most of the time. Just because you have the 16 inch cannon doesnt mean you need to use it when the bb gun works just fine. The whole deal lately about dual booting OSX Intel and Windows on the dev boxes comes to mind. Is it legal? Maybe.. is it worth the bad PR of Apple threating people over it? No, it's not in the big picture. Anyone in Apple who didnt think this would happen as soon as the DVD and PC was shipped out is an idiot and doesnt belong working in a high tech company. Geeks are geeks and there is not a way to change that. So to act surprised and then to be offended that someone had the audacity to do this is just plain stupid on their part. And lets be real, if Apple really wanted the developers not to do this, they should have made CLEAR from the beginning, not buried it in a bunch of legal mumbojumbo where it is still not clear.

Apple has forgotten and still forgets that some of their best ideas have come from the outside or even from people on the inside who were laughed at, belittled and ignored. Can we spell iPod? That was not the brainchild of Jobs nor his inner circle of sycophants (parasites for those who do not know the word). It came from a guy who really thought was cool but it was never going to be practical. He had shopped the idea to a couple of other companies before Apple but it was Apple who took the chance. The graphing calculator with every Mac is another darkhorse project that Apple tried to kill several times and through hook and crook it saw the light of day. Jobs would do well to put his personal ego aside briefly and listen to the people that made Apple great for a change. The hackers, the creative unsung heros that develope kick assed utilities for the Mac, the users who need to live in the real world of multi platform support and others. They might have some really good ideas if they could ever get past the lawyers and parasites.

VPN me to the moon

Whoooweeeeee... Cisco got it right, finally :) I just downloaded (after Cisco reset my password, idiots for pissing off the security world) and installed the newest VPN client for OSX dated August 3rd, 05. Installed and it worked first time!! No mess, no fuss. Now the caveat, it worked with my new 3020 VPN concentrator with the newest code on it, it failed to connected on the old 3005 with very old code. I have not yet tried to connect to the PIX with the VPN but thats on the list. I'm just happy I can now use the RDP client to manage my servers and work from my Mac desktop at home instead of having to boot my laptop just to see a stat from a server. Of course, if Windows had decent stats, a real syslog process and real scripting, it might work better but thats another blog :)

Do yo believe that crap from Sony/BMG? Copy protect the CDs so they dont work on my iPod. Lets do the math, 70 percent of the market of MP3 players is owned by Apple with the iPod. So Sony is going to piss off 70 percent of their customer base because they are made about Apple's own DRM (Fairplay) which Apple wont share with them? Screw Sony.. this is what drives people to steal the damn music.. too high of price or stupid decisions like this. Most people are pretty tolorant of DRM so long as they play their music when they want to, when they want to and on the device they want to. That is not too much to ask and in fact, it's the law. Can Sony spell "fair use"? DRM like this is doomed to fail in the end between it being cracked and just the fact that Sony has pissed off their customers.

So when it Apple going to bring back the next generation of the Newton? The Palms are ok but really dated. Anything running MS Windows CE sucks as my iPaq needs a reboot every so often just like my desktop. At least Windows is consistent. Not to mention the layout and function of Windows CE is not, shall we say, the best for a hand held. The iPod would be an interesting stepping stone but I want something thin.. like the Razor phone that really can fit on my shirt pocket and not make me look lopsided from the weight. A SHARP screen that can be seen in real daylight while I'm sitting in my truck. I dont need games, MP3s, live video. I want names, addresses, notes, possibly email and my schedule. The basics, it's always good to get back to the basics. Thats what made the first 3com/Palms so damn good. They were a PDA and damn good at it before they bloated into "all in one" bricks.

x86 Inside

Logo from OSx86

So now we will see the little Intel logo attached to Mac? I hope not, I always thought that was too kitschy for my own taste. But having both Windows and OSX on the same box definitely is a draw in my book. I posted the info a few days ago with steps on this but the Google cache was cleared (shame on Google) and Apple pressured the site to remove the notes. But, I read the fine print and so did a few others and we feel Apple is off base with their complaining about reconfiguring the Dev hardware to dual boot. Regardless of what Apple would like to see in a perfect world, this aspect of their effort to take over the world is a lost cause.

I was sent (shouts to Ruey-Lung) a very cool site called OSx86 which is a site dedicated to the Intel OSX migration. The site has links and articles on Kernel programming, hacking OSX, reverse engineering OSX and more. You can also find the text from the before mentioned article on dual booting OSX and Windows.

Rumor also has it that you can find the DVD for Intel OSX on the torrents. I have not looked for it since I have way too many other projects right now. But, it leads to an interesting thought. If Apple is bringing out OSX for Intel, wont there be OSX Server for Intel? Does this mean I can recycle my Dell servers into real servers that dont blue screen ? Interesting thought and I'm sure one that gives the exec's at Redmond some sleepless nights.